Comment by ryandrake
4 days ago
I would have believed that before 2020, but after COVID, I fully believe that if the food ran out, half the country would say it's a fake hoax. People would be on their death beds actually starving, and deny it was happening with their last breath.
I disagree. You can escape a disease, even during a global pandemic. And not every person that got COVID was on a ventilator or even felt that bad. Seeing the death toll statistics and even the direct effects through a screen is not visceral for many folks.
Starvation isn't avoidable and you can't ride it out. There isn't any chance that starving to death could be less severe than getting a bad flu. Nobody can avoid not eating for an extended period of time. If there is not enough food, it will affect everyone directly.
>I disagree. You can escape a disease, even during a global pandemic. And not every person that got COVID was on a ventilator or even felt that bad.
Propaganda works.
The knowledge worker class often believes their training will afford them some level of protection against it. Even then, with those warding effects, they're still susceptible. Consider further that most people in society are significantly less educated or trained in epistemological functions than they are - a large portion of society is defenseless against a liar with a megaphone.
Propaganda won't contest that starvation is occurring. It will claim that the reason for the starvation is a specific foe, internal or external e.g. It's China's fault we're starving or the immigrants have caused this food security crisis and once they're gone we'll have enough food for our own people, etc. They'll workshop and see which ones poll well, then run with the talking point that seems to perform best.
Since the government harnessing that discontent has no real desire to fix that problem, all they need to do is maintain the perception that they're the solution, while not addressing the problem itself.
>Propaganda won't contest that starvation is occurring. It will claim that the reason for the starvation is a specific foe, internal or external e.g. It's China's fault we're starving or the immigrants have caused this food security crisis and once they're gone we'll have enough food for our own people, etc. They'll workshop and see which ones poll well, then run with the talking point that seems to perform best.
I don't know if China will work. It's not halfway around the world, but that's the mentality many people have of it. They won't buy that a country on the other side if taking food from their local grocery store.
But it doesn't matter. they blame it on: everyone gets hurt. People fighting on the streets, charital servings overran, private businesses raided, governmental buildings having doors banged on (assuming the soldiers don't simply desert their duties). Then that escalates to riots and perhaps small skirmishes for remaining resources.
When you're truly hungry, nothing is beyond reproach. And I don't think America has a true famine to point to as an example. That's pretty much why it's the one thing all politicians will avoid at all cost. a famine will make a depression seem like a cloudy day.
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Slightly off topic, but this strategy of blaming a crisis on some other cause is pervasive. It's especially useful when you are the reason for the crisis.
For example, consider climate change. Climate change causes draughts, which causes food shortages in countries heavily dependent on their agricultural sector. This, in turn, causes famine.
A certain western power will blame that country's government for mismanaging their agricultural sector instead of pointing out the unusual and dramatic weather changes contributed to the famine. This is, of course, because the western power does not publicly admit climate change is real in order to avoid taking any responsibility for their contribution to this climate change.
This post is propaganda for the idea that whenever you think that immigrants are causing a problem, you're actually incorrect and are being manipulated by some conspiracy.
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People largely weren't on their deathbeds with covid claiming it was a hoax either so I'm not sure how that's a relevant analogy. The response to Covid was far more disruptive to my life than the disease itself, which would obviously not be the case with starvation.
> weren't on their deathbeds with covid claiming it was a hoax
Have you treated many patients with COVID? I’ve heard the opposite of your claim from those who have.
As the husband at the time of a military critical care nurse who worked local ED in a major US city and deployed to New York -- yes, there were absolutely people who denied they had COVID even as they were being intubated.
Most people tended to accept reality when their body started failing, but there were a non-zero number that refused to believe they were infected with coronavirus to the end.
Politicians and social media click farmers spouting lies do influence people, and not everyone starts with a basic understanding of biology and/or science.
People with first hand experience offering counterpoints like Dr Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi did but unfortunately their videos explaining their side of the story were conveniently removed from places your YouTube -- while conveniently leaving the videos remaining to hear the kind of stories you heard.
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many people i know personally who, to this day deny covid was real, they personally knew people who died or were hospitalized and ventilated. yet they still deny it was real.
one of my family members who was in a coma for over a month and in the hospital for months still denies it was covid despite multiple doctors telling him otherwise. some people live in a very real state of denial entirely separated from reality.
sadly i’m not sure the person you replied to is too far off.
Same here. The extreme politicization of the disease, plus the social isolation, plus over reliance on inflammatory social media as one's only channel to the outside world, fully broke some people's grip on reality. Permanently for some.
> People largely weren't on their deathbeds with covid claiming it was a hoax
There were actually lots of people doing exactly this. Perhaps "largely" is the key word here but there were plenty of people dying of covid and refusing ventilators because they believed it was a conspiracy theory.
Apparently the virus was able to ruin cognitive function that people struggling to breathe thought they're fine. (Ok, it seems too convenient that the virus can do this...).
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I had the same reaction. I thought things were getting bad before COVID, but I thought that, generally, when push came to shove, sanity would prevail.
Herman Cain denied COVID's severity right up until it killed him, and them even after he died, his team was still tweeting that "looks like COVID isn't as bad as the mainstream media made it out to be." When I saw that people were literally willing to die to "own the libs", I knew shared reality was toast.
Could also say that over half the population finding such ridiculous mandates justifiable: lockdowns and demands that employers enforce vaccination compliance for all employees, ordoned non democratically by a senile; in a country with constitutional rights likely meant we would not see activists engaging in vandalism anytime soon.
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I was probably one of "you". My comment is simply calling out the liberticide episode we attended rather quietly.
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>> I would have believed that before 2020, but after COVID, I fully believe that if the food ran out, half the country would say it's a fake hoax. People would be on their death beds actually starving, and deny it was happening with their last breath.
We're in a K-Shaped Economy right now and half the folks will deny there is any K and insist everything is amazing.